A polling station official shows a ballot during the counting of votes at the end of the general election in Luanda. Photo: AFP

Angola’s constitutional court on Wednesday upheld the ruling party’s landslide win in last month’s election which will usher in the MPLA’s fourth decade in power and rejected opposition claims the poll was flawed.

The ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola won 61.7 percent of the vote, and 150 of the 220 seats in parliament, the country’s electoral commission said in its final results.

President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, 75, who has ruled since 1979 and is reportedly in poor health, will hand over to former defence minister Joao Lourenco at the presidential inauguration expected on September 21.

“Local vote counting was done in accordance with the law and planned processes,” the court said in its ruling.

Court president Rui Ferreira said the decision was binding and would not be open to appeal, adding that the poll was free, fair and transparent.

Four opposition parties had appealed the result.

Leading opposition party the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) won 26.67 percent of the vote and 51 MPs, while the Casa-CE party scored 9.54 percent and secured 16 seats in parliament.

The remaining three seats were shared by the FNLA and PNS.

UNITA spokesman Alcides Sakala said that his party’s parliamentarians would not take their seats in the new national assembly to protest the court’s decision.

Claims of voting irregularities have been dismissed by incoming president Lourenco, who accused the opposition of “spoiling the people’s party”.

“These political groups, by protesting in their own interests against these so-called procedural irregularities, have violated electoral laws,” he said previously.

The MPLA had predicted it would win easily, but the result showed a decline in support from the 2012 election.

Human Rights Watch Southern Africa has urged the incoming president to “urgently implement much-needed human rights reforms” in the oil-producing country, which suffered years of civil war that ended in 2002.

The country of 28.8 million is battling high poverty levels and has suffered from a slump in crude prices in recent years.

The likely next president of Angola, Joao Lourenco, is a ruling party loyalist and former general who endured several years out of favour after he angled for the top job in the 1990s.

Since then, the 62-year-old Lourenco has convinced key regime players and analysts he is the right man to succeed President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled the oil-rich southwest African nation for 37 years.

Currently defence minister and deputy president of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, Lourenco is firmly “part of the inner circle of power”, according to Didier Peclard, Angola specialist at the University of Geneva.

Dos Santos on Friday named Lourenco as the party’s presidential candidate in the general election expected in August 2017.

Lourenco previously failed to hide his desire to succeed Dos Santos when the president hinted in the 1990s that he might step down.

Dos Santos and his closest aides considered the ex-general was being opportunistic — and Lourenco was forced into several years of “political purgatory”, according to Peclard.

Dos Santos’ apparent flirtation with resignation was merely “a political manoeuvre to bring those in the party with ambitions out of the woodwork, and Joao Lourenco paid the price,” said Peclard.

As a young man, Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco fought against Portugal’s rule of Angola and in the civil war that erupted between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels after independence in 1975.

Like Dos Santos, he was a student in the former Soviet Union, which trained a number of rising young African leaders during decolonisation.

Lourenco became political chief of the armed wing of the MPLA in the civil war — a long and bloody Cold War proxy conflict involving Cuban forces and CIA-backed militias.

– ‘A hardline MPLA general’ –

In 1984, he was appointed governor of Moxico in the country’s east, Angola’s largest province, quickly rising through the MPLA ranks.

The ex-artillery general later led his party’s group in parliament before becoming deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

His appointment as defence minister in 2014 secured his position as favoured successor to Dos Santos, who oversaw the country’s move from Marxist rule to limited cooperation with the United States.

Angola has struggled with the shift to free market capitalism with volatile oil prices taking a heavy toll on the crude-dependent economy in recent years.

Lourenco “has a reasonable reputation as a moderate, not an extreme character,” said Soren Kirk Jensen of the Chatham House study group in London.

“He is probably the right person to be the bridge as Angola goes through a transition.”

Rumours abound that Dos Santos had hoped to hand over the reins of power to one of his children, who include Isabel dos Santos — Africa’s first billionaire woman according to Forbes magazine.

“There is speculation that high-ranked people in the party put their foot down against this,” Jensen said.

The few vocal opponents of Dos Santos’ all-powerful regime hold little hope that Lourenco offers a new chapter for Angola.

Activist and journalist Rafael Marques, a leading regime critic, said that Lourenco is at heart “a hardline MPLA general”, while former political prisoner Nuno Alvaro Dala said that under Lourenco “power in Angola will continue to be militarised”.

Lourenco was born on March 5, 1954 in Lobito in west Angola, and is married to a local employee of the World Bank.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos confirmed Friday that he would step down ahead of elections due in August, signalling the end to his 37-year long reign, and naming Joao Lourenco as his successor.

Dos Santos told a meeting of the ruling MPLA party in Luanda that “the party approved the name of the candidate heading the list in the August elections as (Defence Minister) Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco.”

For nearly 40 years Angolans endured a bloody civil war and extreme poverty as power rested solely in the hands of autocratic President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

State radio’s announcement on Friday that he will stand down next year appears to be the beginning of the end of one of Africa’s longest reigns, and could open a new chapter for a country largely closed off to the outside world.

When Dos Santos, now 74, became president in 1979, war was already raging between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels, four years after independence from Portugal.

Today, Angola has been at peace only since 2002, and is still deeply scared by a conflict that became a vicious proxy battleground in the Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union.

After fighting eventually ceased, a frenetic oil boom saw skyscrapers sprout up in the centre of the capital Luanda and paid for nationwide infrastructure improvements.

But it left millions of ordinary Angolans living in dire slums, and the collapse in oil prices has triggered a full-scale national economic crisis since 2013.

“In some ways he is the father figure of the nation, widely seen — rightly or wrongly — as the man who ended the war,” Soren Kirk Jensen, an Angola specialist at the London-based Chatham House think tank, told AFP.

“It wasn’t a negotiated peace, it was brutal but it is hard to see there was any other way.

“There is growing discontent among the educated middle class, who see him as an autocrat, and as a failure due to the economy.

“But in large parts of Angola and especially rural areas, a generation that suffered during the war still view him in a positive light.

“That is his powerful legacy — very long and very mixed.”

– ‘Ruthless oppression’ –

Leading Angolan writer and opposition activist Rafael Marques is scathing in his criticism of Dos Santos and dismisses any suggestion of the president being held in affection.

Marques himself felt the sharp edge of the regime’s intolerance, standing trial twice on defamation charges and given suspended sentences.

“Dos Santos didn’t lead his country out of war — he was a warmonger who ruined his country and ransacked it for his family’s profit,” Marques said, speaking from Luanda.

“He has now run out of money to maintain his patronage system, so he became far more vulnerable to pressure by his party (to stand down).

“After 37 years of power, and after all the oil money, all you see in Angola is a few flash buildings, the misery of the people, corruption, repression and no freedom of expression.

“The most positive thing to happen would be to bring him to justice, but his departure won’t mean the end of the regime.”

Life after Dos Santos is hard to imagine for many Angolans if — as announced — he does not stand in next year’s election.

Though seldom seen in public, he has been a looming presence through the decades, exercising almost total authority over politics, the courts, the security forces, media and business.

His picture often appears on the front page of newspapers, as well as on countless billboards and framed photographs in every office.

“Looking back, he has been an extraordinary, substantial figure who was involved in ruthless oppression of opponents, including with his own party,” Martin Plaut, African analyst and fellow of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, told AFP.

“In some ways, he did bring stability to his country and he is viewed as an ’eminence grise’ by some other African leaders. But he ruled with an iron rod.”

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, in power for 37 years, will stand down before next year’s general election, state radio said Friday citing sources in the ruling MPLA party.

National Radio of Angola said that Defence Minister Joao Lourenco would take over as MPLA leader, in news confirmed to AFP by Joao Pinto, a senior member of the party.

“The president will not be a candidate and he already has a successor,” Pinto told AFP.

“It will be Joao Lourenco, who will be presented to members of the party on December 10 when we celebrate the party’s anniversary.”

At a meeting of the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) on Friday in Luanda, Dos Santos, 74, launched his party’s campaign for the election, but declined to say if he would seek a new term.

“Our goal is to win the election,” he said. “The key to success will be the discipline and the unity of all our candidates.”

He made a surprise announcement in March that he would step down in 2018, but has given no further details about any resignation plan.

Angola does not directly elect a president, but rather the leader of the winning party becomes head of state.